The introduction of nanometer technologies has enabled products integrating multi-core processors, hybrid accelerators, and large static random access memory (SRAM), ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM), and/or embedded dynamic random access memory (eDRAM) content. These nanometer-enabled semiconductor products may render traditional measurement methods based on device-level solutions insufficient to achieve the level of reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) required of these products. For example, measurement methods for current RAS features may include a technique for measuring a degradation of a maximum operating frequency of a semiconductor product to detect and avoid system faults. These methods may include mimicking a functional path of the semiconductor and measuring the frequency of a signal correlated to the mimicked functional path. Alternative methods may include using specific functional patterns to derive the application performance of the semiconductor product.
Furthermore, traditional methods have limited accuracy for application operating above 1 GHz. For instance, mimicking a functional path of a semiconductor requires complex and unpredictable estimations of numerous specifications related to the actual functional path resulting in significant performance and area overhead during normal operation of a functional path.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.